Concrete is traditionally used for floors in both residential and commercial applications in view of its robustness and economic benefits. Depending upon the circumstances, the concrete may be left unfinished, partially finished or completely finished wherein a high gloss decorative service is obtained.
In warehouses, factories, etc., concrete floors are routinely cleaned by rotary driven machines that employ brushes located on the underside of the machinery whereby the machinery traverses the floor to provide a clean surface. Typically these floor cleaning machines have a tendency of progressively deteriorating the surface of the concrete floor. This is caused by the bristles extending into the naturally occurring crevices in the concrete floor thus causing minute particles of the concrete to break away. Through the repeated cleaning utilizing this floor polishing machine is then typically employed to treat the surface of the floor so as to restore the floor back to a desirable appearance.
Typically the flooring machines that are used on a routine basis sit idle as they have a limited purpose, which is to clean the floor. These traditional flooring machines are not used to polish the floor, but merely for the single purpose of cleaning the floor. Likewise, a separate floor polishing machine traditionally is used for the sole purpose of polishing the concrete floor when the floor condition has sufficiently deteriorated. Accordingly, because these machines have limited purposes, they are seldom used, thus creating inefficiencies for business.
It will be desirable to forego the aforementioned costly steps by providing an improved cleaning and honing brush that works as an attachment to an ordinary cleaning machine, such as a Tennant or Advance brand scrubber machine. It would be desirable to provide an improved cleaning and honing brush that operates under low pressure, does not require and independent power source, continuously exposes new abrasive material during the cleaning process and has interchangeable replaceable polymer brush strips that can be easily removed and replaced with replacement polymer brush strips.
The aforementioned problems may be overcome by providing a polymer brush strip that may be co-extruded with diamond particles integral with the head of the brush strip.
It will further be desirable to provide a floor resurfacing device that operates under low speed and low pressure conditions while utilizing a diamond impregnated brush made of polymer matrix that can be used on ordinary rotary machines including low power, low pressure automatic flooring machines.
It will be desirable to provide an improved polishing system that can be used in connection with a traditional automatic flooring machine wherein a series of diamond embedded polymer strips are used with a rotary disc. The rotary disc bearing the polymer strips can also be used for cleaning the surface of the concrete as well as providing a polishing aspect during the process of cleaning. The floor cleaning process employs a rotary disc having polymer strips with greater grit density so as to provide an improved surface finish. The process is repeated routinely whereby at each cycle the polymer strips are changed out to have finer grit size so as to continuously enhance the surface finish quality. The aforementioned process is accomplished while cleaning the floor during low speed and low pressure conditions. Said process can be used with floors other than concrete floors.
The present invention also solves a problem that is found in the maintenance of floors in offices. For example, in office settings a common floor covering is vinyl composite tile (VCT). Wax is often applied over the tile so as to protect its surface and to provide an enhanced floor appearance. Over time these floors acquire a build up of wax and other particles that need to be removed so as to reestablish the floor's appearance to a new-like condition. Traditionally, a common way of stripping wax and other particles form floors was to use chemicals. The chemicals loosen the wax so it can then be removed via a scrubbing process. Typical ways of removing the loosened wax were to use an abrasive pad. However, the loosened wax tends to gum up the surface of the pad making removal very difficult. It would be preferred to provide a more environmentally green method of stripping wax from VCT, for example, use of water would be preferred. In order to accomplish complete removal of wax from VCT, an improved pad driver with brush design would be desirable. It would also be desirable to provide an improved brush that has a polymer component with a metal component.